Everything In Between
by purebristles
Summary: #BB# It wasn't only about the endgame, it was about the process of getting there.


Disclaimer: These characters belong to Kathy Reichs, Hart Hanson, and Fox.  
Spoilers/Timeline: Set after 309, Santa in the Slush.  
A/N: My first BB fic. I love these two.

**Everything In Between**

**Chapter 1: Soon**

There was something about a man all buttoned up that made a woman just want to… muss him up. There was just something about the shirt-tie-jumper-jacket-coat combination that made something on the pit of her stomach flutter… just a little bit. Perhaps it was the cut of the cloth, perhaps it was the hint of repression that made women want to release the beast within… or perhaps, it was just that Booth looked sexy as sin in his designer outfits.

Temperance caught herself midway through her musings. _What on earth am I thinking about? I'm the rational one in this partnership. Not that it really means anything to … anyone. _With a shake of her head, she turned her attention back to the journal article at hand, noting with some wry amusement that she'd been reading the abstract for the past 15 minutes without progressing any further into the technical details.

After trying to move past the first page of the article without any success, she decided to give her extracurricular reading up as a lost cause. _It's not a crime to appreciate the male form, in any case. Booth wears his suits very well. No 'standard issue FBI body armor' there._ Unless you count the suit as body armor, which really wouldn't make much sense.

She smiled as she packed up her reading material, sweeping them all into a file that she would take to work the next day. It would be nice to get back to the lab after spending Christmas and New Years' in Peru. The National Geographic had been only too happy to extend her working holiday under their auspices when the dig site was discovered to be larger than originally estimated. She had met with some very interesting people on this dig – other anthropologists, historians, a paleontologist, a handful of graduate students, and some scientific photographers. Some, like her, were there because they wanted to be there, while others were there under duress.

"My little boy wanted to build a snowman with me," she remembered Dave the paleontologist saying wistfully. "He's just turned four, and his mother promised him the snowman, but my director said I had to be here, so here I am, swatting mosquitoes and sweating buckets, instead of bundled up, eating roast turkey and playing with my kid."

"Hey, that's life, innit?" Benjamin, the Irish graduate student replied. "I wanted to go back to see me mam, but the faster I finish this bloody doctorate, the faster I can get back home."

_Home._ She had smiled at the word, and remembered the Christmas she just had. Home was just a word in the past, an apartment where she kept her things, bathed, and slept. The past two years had been a crazy time – a father discovered, a brother reconciled, and a new family to boot. Home was now a place that made her smile – not a place, but a feeling.

She zips the file up in her workbag, and curls up with her hot cocoa on her couch, and stares out the window into nothing. It was cold outside, and little ice patterns had formed on her windows. She stirred her cocoa idly, and wondered what everyone else was doing.

Her mobile beeped, and she picked it up. _Message Received_, it blinks at her. She smiles. Booth. He'd been sending her messages since Christmas, telling her that she'd been away too long, her Christmas present was rotting in the boot. She'd replied with instructions to leave it with the lab, where there were cryogenic coolers where anything could be preserved with liquid nitrogen.

She accesses the message, and it pops up at her:

**WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME?**

When, indeed. The events of Christmas past had unnerved her a little, and she had welcomed the extended time away, away from… everything, to just think, or just… run away for a while. She knew that they had been dancing a pretty dance for some time now, and while it had been rather…stimulating, for the most part, she never really seriously thought of going through with all the innuendos. Even the kiss… she didn't think about it too much. Dangerous territory there.

She mulled over her reply for a while, and finally sent:

**SOON.**

* * *

A/N II: First chapter, lots of ideas that could make it out of my head - leave a message to let me know what you'd like our crimefighting duo to do! :)


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